


Once, There Was

by cherishmartell



Series: In His Mother's Arms [2]
Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: 3+ 1, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Gen, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherishmartell/pseuds/cherishmartell
Summary: The three stories Lucy tells Arthur and the one she doesn't.





	1. Theseus and the Minotaur

She’s scarcely out of childhood herself when they bring him inside, apple cheeked and frightened. He clings to Elaine, the one who carried him all the way from the river; despite her reputation for being cold hearted, Elaine is loath to let her out of his sight. Lucy minds him only while Elaine is working and before long he is her little duckling. Following after her when she bustles around the house, taking dirty clothes for washing and fulfilling the petty demands of the older girls.

It isn’t long before they shave his soft curls, his small head now crowned with a fine sheen of golden stubble, force a broom into his still healing hands and put him to work. It’s obvious he is unused to labor, fumbling and dropping brooms, trays and baskets. She tries to help him, but her own work takes her all over the house, all over Londinium. Lucy can’t always keep her eye on him, she knows she can’t, but it hurts all the same when his faltering gets him into trouble. He cries the first time Anne, a new girl, slaps him for spilling wine, his cheek red with the imprint of her hand. 

Lucy returns from the market to find him curled up in a neglected corner of the kitchen, sobbing quietly. He looks up when he hears her approach, tries to make himself smaller before he realizes it’s her. Arthur uncurls himself from his hiding spot and runs towards her, wrapping his small arms around her leg as he buries his face into her skirts.  


She sets her basket on the ground and kneels, taking him in her arms as she soothingly rubs his back as he hiccups and sobs. She placates him with soft words and, finally, when the sniffles begin to slow and his breathing eases, a slice of apple she charms from cook.

He tells her what happens, between greedy bites and the occasional bout of tears. Anger licks at her, hot as the fire that burns across the room. She hides it, doesn’t want to disturb the tentative calm that has finally fallen over him. She hums a few songs, feeds him another slice of apple and his breathing becomes heavier as he dozes off, one hand still clutching at her. 

She takes him up to her room (it’s closer and Arthur is becoming heavier with each passing day) and gently drags the blanket over him before she leaves, shutting the door behind her with a quiet thud. 

While he sleeps, curled on her pallet, she finishes his work, sweeping the floors and cleaning up the messes in the hall. When she finds time to eat (bolting down the bland mutton and boiled potatoes), she gets word to Elaine, who loves Arthur as much as she does. She has clout where Lucy does not and will exact revenge for their boy (and get away with it).  


She works for hours more, finally stopping when the girls start going up to their rooms, leading patrons out of sight. That will be her, in a few years time, but she doesn’t think about it. Her body is weary and she still needs to wake Arthur, and lead him back to his own bed. She leaves the kitchen for the meager servant’s quarters, ensuring that she has secured the door behind her, to ward off unwelcome guests. 

The torches gutter as she heaves herself up the stairs, exhaustion trailing behind her like a wealthy woman’s mantle. She allows herself a smile when she pushes her door open and finds him curled up in the same place she’d left him hours earlier. She is loath to wake him but she is desperate for sleep and a few hours of peace.

She sits on the thin pallet as she reaches over, gently shaking him awake. Arthur doesn’t wake easy, mumbling and trying to pull the blanket over his head. 

But she persists, whispering coaxing words as she pulls the blankets away and tugs him into her arms. He’s pliant with sleep, arms wrapped loosely around her neck and his sleepy breaths stirring strands of her hair, as she nudges her door open and makes the short journey down the hall to his closet sized room. 

Lucy shifts him in her arms, freeing up a hand to turn down the coverlet. She bends down, depositing Arthur in his bed. A yawn struggles out as she drags the covers over him, stooping to press a kiss to his forehead, his brow untroubled as his eyes struggle open, fixing on her in the dim light provided for the tortures flickering outside his door. 

“Tell me a story.” He begs her, voice heavy with sleep as he stubbornly grabs for her skirts when she turns to leave. 

Lucy is still feeling guilty, eyes flickering unconsciously to her cheek. But there’s more to it. She’s seen what this neighborhood does to boys, makes them hard before their time. So she acquiesces, perching on the edge of his straw stuffed bed. 

He clambers over to her, eager as a puppy as he lays her head in his lap, thumb migrating to his mouth unconsciously. She brushes her fingers over his head, feeling stubble in one direction, velvet the other. She tells him a story left behind by long dead travelers. 

It’s about a boy, who left his home to save his people from a future of endless sacrifices to a beast that had the head and strength of a bull, but the body of a man. It was out of love for his father, for his people that he did this thing, bravery that helped him see the deed through; he even won the aide, and love, of a fair princess. Arthur listens with rapt attention, eyes wide though he’s heard it before. 

It’s that expression that keeps her from mentioning what comes after; that the noble hero abandoned his sweet, naïve lady on an island and sailed home, black sails high, sending his father plummeting to his death, believing his son was dead. 

See, people think her stupid, but Lucy has a head for stories, always has, and she wants her duckling to believe in it, believe in heroes and love and bravery, before the world beats it out of him. 

He tries to beg another, but she is tired and his eyes are struggling to stay open. So she kisses him, whispers ‘good night’ and slips out the door, gently shutting it behind her.

He doesn’t cry again, the next time he is punished for a mistake or even when the local boys make him the scapegoat for their displeasure. If anything, he stands taller, squares his shoulders and stares down his tormentor. 

She knows she’s made the right decision.


	2. A Little Farm

Like many of the girls, Lucy says little of her life before coming to the house. It’s painful to remember what it was like _before_ , the simple joy that suffused each day, though the work was hard and tedious. 

There was an ease then, a comfortable companionship that she can never quite capture in the house. Now that she’s working upstairs, things have changed, and not entirely for the better. True, the pay is better, and some of her regulars bring little gifts, cheap bracelets and silk scarves, but the pettiness she’d seen as a servant has morphed into something crueler. 

The girls are constantly jockeying for patrons, a never ending competition to get the richer guests, the pleasant looking ones, or the ones who have kindness in their eyes. Some don’t like sharing, not with each other and certainly not with the girl who was once at their beck and call. 

They are cruel, tearing her favorite dresses, pinching her while they wait at the door for the appointed hour until her skin is decorated in black and blue. It makes Arthur angry when he sees the marks she can’t hide (marks too delicate for any man’s hand). He urges her to do something, begs her to tell him the names of the few who keep up their spiteful ways. 

He thinks himself the man of the house, though he is still a boy; he wants so badly to protect them, protect **her**. He is too young to take on these burdens so she refuses, gently, with a kiss to his brow before he remembers he is too old to be babied and shrugs her off. Lucy sends him off to Kung Fu George, standing on the steps as she watches him fall into step with Back Lack and Wet Stick. 

In truth, he is the only ally left to her now; Elaine is dead, has been for three summers of an illness that slowly ate away at her until there was nothing left. 

It is lonely, but he is a child and she will not burden him with this. It is not his battle. It is **hers**. 

As time goes on, the tricks continue, but they lose their fierce sting. For she has found her own specialty: storytelling. 

She had never really considered herself to be any good; for years, Arthur had been her only listener, then Elaine, for that too brief time. They knew her, looked past her poor words and awkward phrases, and relished in the simple details. She, like many in the city, has received little education and, even though she now has coin enough to do what she likes, no one wants a learned whore. Elegant turns of phrase elude her, the honied words of the occasional courtier frustrate her. 

Still, she _learns_ , in the house if one could believe it. Lucy makes a beeline for the sailors, the ones that make the other girls turn up their noses and claim that they smell much like the fish and brine that surrounds them each day. She learns, sitting at feet and perching on knees, her attention rapt and eyes filled with a respectful reverence these men rarely experience. It sways them like nothing else, coaxes tongues to spill tales of far off lands, of places and creatures she can only dream of. 

She hoards these stories like gold, turning them over in her mind like one would a fine jewel, whispering them to herself in the lonely hours of the night until she knows them as well as the teller. Slowly but surely, she comes to know them **better** and, before long, she is embellishing them, making them her own. 

She longs to try them out on Arthur, but he is no longer her little duckling, clinging to her skirts and hanging onto her every word. His lessons with Kung Fu George and his misadventures with Back Lack and Wet Stick run him ragged, from the first rays of the morning sun to late hours of the night. 

So she practices, with patrons so drunk they stumble, their words slurred and hands like limp fish; they care little for what she has to say, so it emboldens her. Her tales become more and more elaborate, as she weaves together pieces of far off lands and the magical tales of her childhood. 

They become something new, something _other_ on her tongue. If she were bolder, she might say she was weaving a spell of her own, one that would ensure that she and Arthur were better fed, better clothed and able to leave this place when the time came. The last is a dream, but a pleasant one, so she lets it linger. 

_A better life for her boy, away from the filth and the violence of Londinium. He’d make something of himself, use those brains of his for something other trouble…_  


It isn’t the only story that hangs over her head. True, her fanciful tales are what bring men to her, but it isn’t the story they hunger for. During the evening meal, she watches them, that gleam they get in their eyes as they stare at her, that predatory observation that makes her want to flinch.

They want to take more from her, as if her time and body weren’t enough. They want **her** memories, the only remnants she has of a life long gone.  


They ask her about where she came from, of her life before, their breath soured with wine and hot in her ear, hands locked proprietarily around her waist. She refuses every time, unwilling to tarnish the memories that she holds dear, the only things that cannot be taken from her. 

She looks at them, studies their expressions (and the weight of their purse) and tells them what she thinks they want to hear. It’s a different story every time: some days she’s the illegitimate child of a prominent nobleman, other days she was a girl bound for the convent, lured away by the sweet words of a boy who vanished like smoke or a shepherdess who lost her way.

In truth, they all fail, even Arthur and she denies him nothing. But these are the one things that are truly _hers_ , and after a lifetime of loss, she cannot bring herself to share one more.

Until she can. 

Lucy tells him about her childhood, once. Arthur is a gangling youth, no more than twelve summers old. It had been an ordinary day, as ordinary as one could get at a whorehouse in the poorer end of Londinium. He’d been fine earlier, skulking in corners with Wet Stick and Back Lack, whispering conspiratorially, only to go quiet when she came too close. 

She thinks little of it when he rises, complaining of a headache and walks back to his room. She expects him back by the evening meal, the one they always share before she left for the night’s work. But, when the moments pass and the food grows cold, unease creeps over her. Lucy doesn’t know what finally made her get to her feet and hurry up the stairs, but she is thankful for whoever, and whatever, it is. 

By the time she arrives, shoving his door open with a haste he would normally complain at, Arthur’s face is clammy in the dim light of the torches, beads of sweat gleaming on his forehead like a circlet.

He’s terribly ill, wracked with chills one minute, shoving off all his blankets the next as he complains of an unbearable heat. Thinking it nothing more than a childhood illness, all too common in their neighborhood, they try to nurse him themselves. Lucy retreated to his side, all thoughts of coin and freedom forced from her head as she dabs at his forehead and murmurs comforting words.

But he doesn’t see her; he cries out for Elaine, for her (she stifles her panicked cries, exchanging terrified glances with Isolde, her companion this wretched night). He also cries out for his mother, his pained whimpers of _Mama_ cutting her deeper than any knife. She wonders if he can see them, their Elaine and the woman who had vanished before her little duckling came to them. 

Fear robs her of her voice, soothing whispers stifled into a panicked rasp. 

By morning, he’s worse than he was before and it feels like someone has tied a stone to Lucy’s heart. They are sure he is going to die, with Agnes (now occupying Elaine’s place) sending one of the new girls running to the old woman who lives near the outskirts. It is a last resort; her fees are dear, very dear, but she is discreet and she is one of the few to help them. 

When the girl returns, the old woman is leaning on her arm, breathing heavily as she approaches the bedside. But once she gets to work, she moves with the speed of a woman more than half her age. After what seems like an age, she has Arthur breathing easily again, his fever breaking and his breathing unlabored. 

It is one of the sweetest sounds that Lucy has ever heard. It brings tears to her eyes as she and the others listen in rapt silence, their attention interrupted when they look up and exchange thankful glances. Whatever enmity between them has passed, at least for now. 

The others, satisfied he would live, decide to sit in shifts; Lucy volunteers first and Agnes takes the old woman away, to pay her for her troubles and ply her with hot food before she makes her way back to her home. When he opens his eyes, turns his head to look at her, Lucy grasps his hand in hers and weeps with relief. “Why you cryin’?” the boy asks, his voice hoarse from lack of drink. 

“Because you scared me, silly duck,” Lucy replies, her own shaking as she abandons his side and pours him a small glass of beer. 

She raises his head, supports it in the crook of her arm like he’s still a baby, and brings the crude vessel to his lips. He drinks without complaint, but makes no move to request another one. She carefully lowers his head back down, returns it to the small table standing beside his bed and resumes her vigil, tenderly pulling the covers (clean, Lucy’s good set, until his can be purged of infection). 

He doesn’t protest that he’s too old when she leans down to kiss his forehead, and grabs for her hair like he did when he was small. “Tell me a story?” he asks, twisting the long brown locks between his fingers. She makes a small _tisk_ , but she’s so relieved he’s mending that she sits down on the edge of his bed when he releases her hair and scoots down, only to lay his head on her lap when she’s settled. 

“What do you want to hear?” she asks as she begins the old routine, running her fingers through his shorn hair. 

She thinks he’ll ask for one of his favorites, but she’s not as surprised as she should be when he asks, “Tell me a story about you, when you were young.” 

The words stick in her throat (old habits die hard) but after what he’s been through, what they’ve all been through the last two days knocks away her reserve. So she nods. “Alright then, just this once.” 

She tells him of her life in a village a few days ride from Londinium. Of her parents, her kind and strong father, her good natured and sly mother. She even speaks of her brothers, of Peter and Joseph. She tells him of days spent herding goats, collecting carrots and chasing her brothers through the village. He smiles when she describes the stubborn goat she doted on, the one who chewed on the hem of her dress and ran off with half finished flower crowns. 

Her voice becomes thick as she remembers her brothers’ games, a pair of brave warriors locked in endless combat, their wooden sticks (rendered into the sharpest swords) clattering against one another. Of her role as the damsel in distress, a prince guarded by a fearsome dragon (though the effect was usually ruined by her dangerous escort’s penchant for wandering off, in search of a tasty patch of grass). 

She even speaks of the food, longingly conjuring memories of her mother’s bread, still pipping hot as it was broken open at the table and her father’s stew, thick with rabbit and potato and herbs that she no longer knows the names of. 

For those few hours, they’ve left the dirt and smoke of Londinium behind and retreated to the countryside, where the sunlight was like honey, warm and golden, and the grass a living sea beneath their feet. 

She doesn’t tell him of the plague that carried them all off, save her and Peter who disappeared soon after. 

He’s still not himself, poor lamb, doesn’t hear the way her voice tightens around certain memories nor see the way her eyes gleam with tears. He’s tired soon though, nodding off one minute only to try and shake it off the next, so eager to listen. In the end though, Lucy makes the decision. 

“Right, to bed with you, Duckling.” He makes a face at the childhood nickname but he doesn’t protest, yawning as he drags the blankets over his head. She waits until he’s fallen asleep, until she’s counted his breaths and assured herself that all is as it should be. She presses her lips to his sweaty hair, rises and lets Agnes in while she herself steals down the hall. 

She waits until she’s in her own chamber before she gives way to relieved sobs.


End file.
